Illegal immigrant residents targeted

Crackdown weighed in Carpentersville

September 29, 2006|By John Keilman and George Houde, Chicago Tribune. Tribune staff reporter Liam Ford contributed to this story.

In what experts said was a first for the Chicago area, two Carpentersville trustees have proposed that the village punish landlords and businesses that "aid and abet" illegal immigrants.

The ordinance, expected to be formally introduced at Tuesday's Village Board meeting, would also make English the official language of Carpentersville, a town whose population of 37,000 is almost half Hispanic.

Trustees Paul Humpfer and Judy Sigwalt said the village has been plagued with overcrowded apartments and unpaid ambulance bills, problems they attributed to people who have entered the country illegally.

Their ordinance would deny business permits and village contracts for any employer who hired undocumented workers. It also would fine landlords $1,000 for knowingly renting property to illegal immigrants.

"If I sit back and continue to ignore this issue [and] it's hit us in the face and the pocketbook, costing millions and millions of dollars, then I don't deserve to sit in this seat," Sigwalt said Wednesday at a special meeting of Carpentersville's Audit and Finance Commission.

The ordinance would need four votes to pass. Trustee Kay Teeter said she would probably support it, and Trustee Linda Ramirez Sliwinski and Village President Bill Sarto firmly opposed the idea.

"I object to the fact that this singles out illegal aliens," Sarto said. "There are no statistics on who is a deadbeat on ambulance service. You cannot say one particular group is the cause of problems."

Trustee Ed Ritter said he was undecided, and Trustee James Frost could not be reached for comment Thursday.

With immigration reform efforts stalling in Congress, much of the action has filtered down to the local level. The New York-based Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund said eight towns have passed laws similar to the Carpentersville plan, and another 33 are considering them.

Fund spokesman John Garcia said no town has officially begun to enforce its ordinance, apparently waiting to see what happens in Hazleton, Pa., a city that has become a legal battleground on the issue.

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta said a spate of crimes committed by illegal immigrants in recent months convinced him that his town needed to get tough.

"I'm watching the quality of life of my city being destroyed right before my eyes," he said Thursday. "I'm not going to wait for the federal government to do something."

The Hazleton law, which has been amended since it first passed in July, requires all prospective tenants in Hazleton to get a permit from the city. The city would check the person's ID against a federal database to determine his legal status before approving a permit.

Landlords found to be renting to people who don't have permits would be fined $1,000, plus additional fines for every day the tenants stay, Barletta said.

Though the city has not begun enforcement, that could begin by mid-October, he said. A coalition of attorneys that sued to block an earlier version of the law has not decided whether to pursue further litigation, but says the ordinance is still flawed.

"It creates different zones where people can or can't live," said Foster Maer, a lawyer for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. "Since there's a racial aspect to this, the impact could get pretty ugly."

Immigration expert Sylvia Puente said Illinois has generally welcomed people from other countries regardless of whether they came legally. Chicago has famously declared itself a sanctuary for the undocumented, saying it is not the role of local authorities to enforce immigration laws.

In recent years, though, many new immigrants have settled in Chicago's suburbs, and that has created tension. Towns like Elgin, Cicero and Waukegan have gotten into legal trouble for allegedly discriminating against Hispanics through restrictive housing codes.

But Rob Paral, research fellow with the American Immigration Law Foundation, said that until now, suburban public officials have not explicitly targeted the undocumented.

"That's a disturbing twist on things," he said.

Rosanna Pulido disagreed. She is state director of Minuteman Civil Defense, an organization that opposes illegal immigration, and she attended Wednesday's meeting in Carpentersville to lend support to Humpfer and Sigwalt.

"What we're seeing around the country is local entities saying, you know what, folks, we have to take matters into our own hands. That's the proper response, because they were voted in to protect American citizens."